Invisible children | Sofia Kouvelaki | TEDxAthens

In this powerful talk, Sofia Kouvelaki explains how her work supports thousands of displaced people who are currently living in overcrowded refugee camps near Athens and on the Greek islands, helping them to move from despair to hope, and from fear to security.

Sofia Kouvelaki is Executive Director at The HOME Project. A non-profit organization that provides support, protection, education and social integration services to unaccompanied minors.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

I am here tonight

because I gave a promise
to a 12-year-old boy from Afghanistan.

His name is Hamid,

and this is his photo.

Hamid left by himself
from Kandahar in Afghanistan.

He left behind
his five brothers, his parents

and the terror imposed by the Taliban.

Hamid was thought to have
the best potential amongst his siblings.

He was the best student.

What he wanted was a chance
to have a normal life.

He wanted to stop struggling to survive
every single day of his life.

He wanted to stop being afraid.

These were his words to me:

"I've walked all the way to Turkey,

through the mountains, the valleys
and the deserts of three countries.

After four months, I reached the coast.

I had never seen so much water before.

The small boat to Greece
was full of people.

Women and babies were crying.

Thank God, we arrived alive.

But we were arrested by the police.

I ended up in prison.

It is difficult when I think
how many days I was there.

What did I do wrong?"

Hamid was detained with another 40 minors

in Amygdaleza, a detention centre
for refugees in Greece.

After being released, he spent five months
living homeless in Pedion tou Areos,

one of the largest public parks
in the centre of Athens.

"I was alone again.

Every night men would come near me.

They would drink beer and do drugs.

One night, an old man came

and offered me 20 euros
to go home with him.

I started running to get away.

I was afraid of the police
because I had no papers.

I did not know what to do
or where to go.

I didn't speak any English nor Greek,

so I couldn't ask for help.

Someone led me to a centre
for homeless people in Omonoia Square.

I started sleeping
in one of the corners of the square.

On Christmas Day I met Amadou,

who brought me
to The Home Project shelter.

Everything has change since then,

and I can now tell you my story.

Hamid was one of the fortunate
lone refugee children.

You see, he ended up in one
of our shelters.

Sadly, this is not the case
for the majority of the kids.

Hamid is one of thousands of children
travelling all alone

amidst the biggest demographic change
since the Second World War.

They are what we call in official terms
unaccompanied minors.

The reasons they travel alone vary.

Many have lost their parents
during the journey.

Others are sent away to escape war,
poverty or persecution.

They are all in search of a better future.

Travelling alone and unprotected,
they are exposed to all sort of dangers,

from child abuse to organ trafficking
to sexual exploitation.

As we speak,

children in the centre of Athens,
right next to us,

are selling themselves for sex
in order to survive.

What awaits refugee children
on the other side of their epic journeys

are closed borders in Greece,

where there is a chronic lack

of social welfare facilities
and services to accommodate them

and provide for them the necessary
safety and protection framework.

More than 1.5 million people

have reached Greece
since the beginning of 2015.

More than 9,000 lives have been lost
while crossing the Mediterranean.

Many were children,
and many of them were travelling alone.

The term migrant or refugee crisis

cannot begin to explain
the complexity of this phenomenon.

40% of refugee arrivals are children.

Of those, we don't know exactly how many,

and this is part of the problem,

are thousands of children
who travel and arrive in Europe all alone.

According to official estimates,

100,000 unaccompanied minors

sought asylum
in the European Union in 2015.

13% of them are children
younger than the age of 14.

Hamid is one of the 6,512

officially registered
unaccompanied minors in Greece.

This is a four-times larger number
than the corresponding period a year ago.

And note this:

after the EU-Turkey agreement,

despite the general decrease
in the number of arrivals,

the number of lone refugee children
is constantly increasing.

What has happened is

that with the closure of the borders
these children are now trapped in Greece,

and all the relevant shelters
are in full capacity.

As a result, today,
more than 1,000 children

are homeless and in urgent need
of protection and support.

They are spread all over the country,

living in the streets, in camps,
in detention centres, in police stations.

They are suffering

from all sorts of physical, emotional,
psychological and sexual violence.

These children are
the victims of a cycle of violence.

They start off fleeing from violence,

but then they experience it again
once they reach European borders.

They often suffer
from the injured hero syndrome.

You see, they arrived in what they thought
would be their promised land,

where they thought
all their troubles would be over,

only to experience more violence,
more insecurity and more abuse.

The children that arrive at our shelters
are often more traumatized

by what they have experienced
after their arrival in Greece, in Europe,

than what they have endured
during their perilous journeys or at home.

Now I know, I have bombarded you

with a lot of numbers
and a lot of heavy information.

So, lets pause for a few seconds
and ask ourselves:

What is a child refugee?

It's a child in urgent need of a refuge.

It's a child in urgent need of a home.

At The Home Project,

we don't work with migrants,

we don't work with refugees;

we work with children.

Children that have been marginalized
to the point of invisibility.

HOME stands for Help, Overcome,
Motivate, Empower,

which is what we do
with everyone that we work with.

Our mission is
to support, protect, educate

and provide social integration services

to children that travel and arrive
in Greece, in Europe, all alone.

We are currently supporting
the operation of five shelters.

Four of them are for boys

and one of them is for girls
and underage mothers with their babies.

We also have another
five shelters in the making

that will provide support
to a total of 200 children

and will lead to the creation
of more than 110 jobs.

We are grateful to our founding sponsor,

the Libra Group,

that has enabled us,
in less than four months,

to move from inception to set-up,
and from set-up to operations,

proving by our actions

that solutions do exist,
solutions are possible.

The Home Project shelter model
is based on three pillars.

First of all, through
our partners on the ground,

we provide a holistic network
of services for the children

covering their basic needs,

such as food, shelter, of course,
material provision,

medical and pharmaceutical support,

but also anything

that has to do with legal,
psychological and social support.

All of our children obtain
immediate access to education

and attend school in Greece.

The second element is that we create jobs.

We create jobs for Greeks,
but also for refugees.

In order to integrate into any society,
people need a home,

but they also need a job.

50% of our shelter staff
comes from the refugee community,

providing role models
for the children in our shelters.

The third element is that we add value
to the local economy.

We all know what Greece has suffered
after nine years of financial crisis,

so we find unused, unrented buildings
all over the country,

we renovate them,

turn them into shelters,

and pay the rent,

and the property tax - the infamous ENFIA,
for the Greeks in the room -

to the owners.

So, what we do, is we create
a win-win situation for everyone:

for the Greeks, the refugees,

but also for the most vulnerable,
for the children.

We create healing environments,

platforms of inclusion,

implementing a more organic,
bottom-up form of social integration

that will lead to community engagement.

That's the only way

we can fight xenophobia,
racism and violent local reactions.

Three elements are key in our work.

The first one is empathy.

We are in constant contact

with the children and the adults
that we work with,

but also with our partners on the ground,
at the front line of this refugee crisis.

We must be near them,

in order to understand
their constantly evolving needs

and address them
in the most efficient manner.

The second element is the creation

of a positive community of support
around these children,

which is what we are trying
to do here, tonight.

We forge and coordinate
effective partnerships

between all relevant stakeholders:

NGOs, corporations, private donors,
media, public authorities,

national and international
organizations and foundations.

We act as a solutions platform,

and a channel

through which help can address
the most urgent needs of the children.

The third element is
efficiency and rapidity of operations.

Every minute, 12 refugee children
are being displaced in the world.

Every minute we spend
turning our backs on this problem

has a serious toll on human lives.

We are dealing
with a very vulnerable population,

literally living on the edge.

Through The Home Project,

we not only provide a safe home,

we give a voice to the children,
we make them feel visible and validated.

We might have managed
to secure support for 200 children,

but there are still 1,000
that urgently need our help.

What would you do

if you had to protect your child's life

and bombs were falling
right next to your house every single day,

or ISIS wanted to militarize
your ten-year-old son,

or the Taliban wanted to marry
your eight-year-old daughter?

What would you do?

I am not here tonight to try to shock you,

or disturb you,

or make you feel sad.

I just want to ask you not to look away.

Not to look away

and remain passive about the violence
that is taking place right next to us.

These children could be our children.

These children are tomorrow's future.

By turning our backs to them,

it's like giving up on hope,

giving up on love,

giving up on a better world.

In what kind of a world
do we want to live?

In what kind of a world
do we want our children to live in?

There is no more time to be lost.

We really are on the edge.

Supporting and empowering these children

is a daily resistance to violence.

That is the promise we gave to Hamid.

That is the promise we give every day

to Omar, Taha, Osman, Ali,

Amadou, Mamadou, Diyar,

and to all the children
living in our shelters.

You can now all do something

to help these children be visible

and become what they are,

children ... again.

Thank you.

(Applause)